"Glenn Greenwald, the reporter at The Guardian who broke the story about NSA surveillance programs, discusses the information received from whistleblower Edward Snowden, saying the federal government is now trying to 'scare the American people' to justify its 'massive spying program.'" Continue reading →
"The FBI’s use of a controversial Patriot Act provision to demand business records has skyrocketed more than 1,000 percent under President Barack Obama versus his Republican predecessor George W. Bush. The so-called business records provision of the Patriot Act, titled Section 215, is the justification used for the NSA’s massive PRISM intercept program. A single Section 215 order was behind last week’s revelation that Verizon is cooperating with the NSA and handing over millions of phone call records daily. Companies that receive demands for business records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act are also subject to a secret gag order." Continue reading →
"Russia has offered to consider an asylum request from the US whistleblower Edward Snowden in the Kremlin’s latest move to woo critics of the west. Snowden fled the United States before leaking the details of a top-secret US surveillance programme to the Guardian earlier this month. He is currently believed to be in Hong Kong, but has reportedly changed hotels to keep his location secret. Snowden is not known to have made any asylum requests, including to Russia. Yet speaking to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said: 'If such an appeal is given, it will be considered.'" Continue reading →
http://www.mrctv.org/videos/leno-%E2%80%98we-wanted-president-listens-all-americans-now-we-have-one%E2%80%99
"The conservative host described the NSA’s surveillance programs as a 'massive intrusion.' O’Reilly warned that 'corrupt government officials' could leak sensitive data to hurt their political opponents. He said that keeping actual content of private conversations on file was 'flat out unconstitutional.' O’Reilly’s tune was far different under the Bush administration. At the time, he voiced strong support for the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, which collected the telephone records of millions of Americans. In 2006, after a judge ruled the program was unconstitutional, O’Reilly speculated that she didn’t care if Americans were killed by terrorists." Continue reading →
"A Southwest Airlines flight bound for Texas from Los Angeles with 143 passengers aboard was forced to land in Phoenix on Monday after a telephoned bomb threat and U.S. fighter jets were diverted to monitor the situation, authorities said. All passengers on board were taken off without incident, the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and Southwest said. Phoenix police interviewed the passengers and bomb squad officers and dogs swept the aircraft. Police spokesman Sergeant Steve Martos later Tweeted that the search found 'nothing of concern.'" Continue reading →
"The classified drone camera footage drew public attention after the German defense ministry scrapped a drone program for its lack of anti-collision technology. After the encounter, the drone was caught in the plane’s wake turbulence, lost control, and crashed over the Afghan capital Kabul, Der Spiegel reported. The video was leaked a week after German Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière decided to scrap the $652 million EuroHawk program – meant to be a replacement for existing reconnaissance aircraft – including the Luna drones." Continue reading →
"Over the weekend I related the story of Gabriel Silverstein, a businessman and pilot who for no apparent reason was subjected to a two-hour detention and invasive search by Homeland Security officials as he traveled across the country in his small plane. The picture above is not from that episode; it's an official DHS photo of its emergency-response agents being trained. Below and after the jump are two additional stories of the same sort. The first is a long account from Larry Gaines, a small-plane pilot from California who had a similar episode last year. The story is long and detailed, and will be riveting for those in the aviation world." Continue reading →
"Eager to quell a domestic furor over U.S. spying, the nation's top intelligence official stressed Saturday that a previously undisclosed program for tapping into Internet usage is authorized by Congress, falls under strict supervision of a secret court and cannot intentionally target a U.S. citizen. He decried the revelation of that and another intelligence-gathering program as reckless. For the second time in three days, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper took the rare step of declassifying some details of an intelligence program to respond to media reports about counterterrorism techniques employed by the government." Continue reading →
"What is being done about this? Nothing. It keeps growing. How much does this cost? At least $80 billion a year. That is a lot of money. What is being done inside the federal government to control this? Nothing. Do they monitor our phone calls? Yes. Did they deny this for years? Of course. Then Edward Snowden blew the whistle. A British newspaper published it. Will this change anything? Yes. He will go to jail. Anything else? He will get a great deal of publicity. Anything else? No. The Obama Administration is far more concerned with Snowden’s leaks than with the snoopers. The Obama Administration is the Bush Administration, digitally speaking." Continue reading →